here we are as in olden days
by tigerlily25
Summary: Green and blue and red blink frantically, erratically, from inside the house that was once their home, and if he was watching an ECG monitor instead of the walls of Meredith’s living room he’d be calling for the paddles right about now, DNR or no.


**A/N**: Written for the Secret Santa fic exchange over on the ga_fanfic LJ comm. It's been years since I wrote anything Grey's, and my first time ever trying to get inside Alex's stubborn head, so I'm all kinds of sweaty-palmed nervous about it. Hope you enjoy.

**Summary**: There's no place like home, and maybe that's why he's here - even if it's not his home any more.

* * *

Alex sits on the porch swing, hands fisted in the sleeves of his jacket to ward off the bitter winter chill that this year more than ever seems to pervade his very marrow. The cold leaches into his bones and steals his breath. If he's being honest – and Alex is nothing but brutally honest, it's his 'thing', like Mer 's dark and twisty (which he's pretty sure is still there, despite her Post-It marriage and newlywed bliss and… whatever) or Cristina's heart-lust – he's not entirely sure what he's doing there.

The bottle of bourbon lies unopened, heavy and oddly comforting against his thigh, still sheathed in its paper sack.

"Merry Christmas," the clerk at the liquor store had said with a smile that was half 'wish I was you', half 'you poor sad bastard', handing over his change and turning away to serve the giggling women with sequined capes and tinsel in their hair. It's a merry freaking Christmas, Karev style, and isn't this just a perfect example of everything he swore he'd never be again as he watched Izzie walk down the aisle toward him – alone and bitter and seeking absolution or comfort or just wanting to chase the memories of her from his head.

He's not entirely sure which, and he's even less sure that it matters.

It's only a few short steps from here to hanging out in public parks, weaving among trees and muttering to himself, Alex thinks, looking at the bottle, at the ripples of caramel and gold that splinter and spread on his leg with each gentle sway of the swing under the porch light.

There's nobody home – Meredith and Derek are likely still bent over an open skull in the OR, perfecting the Shepherd Method or exchanging those heavy wordless looks in that way that makes the scrub nurses blush and the interns whisper and makes Alex want to throw things just to hear them break.

There's no place like home, and maybe that's why he's here - even if it's not really his home anymore.

The house is silent and dark inside, save for the coloured lights on the Christmas tree, flashing their staccato tattoo on the walls of the living room. On off, on off, blinking in a rhythm oddly like a heart monitor, casting ghostly shadows across floor and furniture and memories.

In that moment, he sort of wants to cut and run – not only from his sad little vigil on Meredith and Derek's front porch, but from everything that he can't fix because he's still not sure why it broke in the first place. A new feeling for him. It's what he does best, shies away from human contact, takes careful aim with words designed to cut deep enough that they'll be so busy tending to their own wounds they won't see his own.

He wants to run, but somewhere along the way he missed the starting gun and now he's just choking on Izzie's dust.

The lights blink lazily as though they're mocking his inability to keep up. On off. On off.

"Mer's not home," he hears above the roar of static in his ears, and his breath catches the way it always does when he hears a female voice – except maybe for Yang's, because nobody could mistake her less than dulcet tones for anything gentle or tentative. It's been almost long enough for him to forget _her_ voice, but not quite. The bottle shifts when he does, almost falls - but not quite.

"Really? Hadn't noticed," he bites out, and is somehow unsurprised when Lexie doesn't take the bait, just rolls her eyes and joins him on the bench seat, close enough for him to feel the impossible heat of her skin radiating through the layers of denim and wool but not close enough for it to be uncomfortable.

Not _quite_.

"There are better ways to get time off work than through self-induced pneumonia," Lexie says, her eyes darting from his face to the bottle between them and back again. Her face is alternately shadowed and lit with reds and blues and greens. On off, on off, and what Alex hears under the beat of the lights is 'are you okay?', even though she doesn't actually come out and say it.

(Not that he's complaining about that, exactly.)

"Lovers quarrel?" he asks, because her eyes are just a little red around the edges and she's twisting her fingers together in her lap like she's aiming to snap bird-like bone. Lexie opens her mouth, closes it, and opens it again. It's not the most attractive of looks, really, though it sort of makes him want to rescue her from the words she clearly can't get out.

(Like a damn puppy or something – another thing he'd said no to, because they may not be interns anymore but they're still tied to what once was Seattle Grace and it wouldn't be fair to bring something into the house that they had neither the time nor the inclination to love. He's pretty sure she understood that, but he's all about the second-guessing these days.)

He's quick to push it from his mind. Doesn't help, anyway, and he's not one for wallowing. Seriously.

"Wait, don't tell me. I don't really care what you and McSteamy do in the free minutes when the hospital doesn't own your ass."

As soon as the nickname is out, he wants to take it back, but Lexie doesn't call him on the moment of girly weakness. Shit, he's been thoroughly emasculated by the company of McNickname-giving women – or maybe Yang asked Santa for bigger balls and someone at the North Pole figured he wasn't exactly using his, so…

"There's no wreath on the door," Lexie says abruptly, and for a moment he wonders if she came seeking the same thing, except he's still not sure what he was even looking for. "There should be a wreath, because that's what you do at Christmas. You hang a wreath, or – or stockings, or a stupid reindeer or something, unless you're in a building that frowns on the decorating of doors or you're like, the biggest Grinch in the world or – " She cuts herself off with a sigh. "You're meant to stop me when I do that."

It's a Grey thing.

"Sloan doesn't do decorations?" he asks, because he needs to not think of eight-foot trees and angels or the crushed expression Izzie's face when he told her that there was no freakin' way they were going to fit a tree on the top of the car, let alone in the _trailer_ without having to lay it sideways on the floor in the tiny hallway.

Faceplanting into a bed of pine needles isn't how he likes to start his days.

He'd give her the world, he'd risk his career to keep her breathing, to keep her with him, and yet 'for better or worse' didn't extend to conversations about Christmas decorations; especially not when he'd just come out of a gruelling eleven-hour surgery repairing the mess inside a seven year old girl's abdomen.

(She had lived, the little blonde angel who slipped her hand from her mom's grip and ran out into the road on an icy night, and maybe she's out there somewhere writing her letter to Santa right now. He hopes so, anyway.)

She had lived – they _both _had – and Alex had figured that there would be time later to negotiate with Izzie about the tree, because Christmas wasn't for a while yet, just a far-off event on the horizon of what he mistakenly thought was their newlywed bliss.

"Sloan – Mark – doesn't do _Christmas_," Lexie says with a hint of frustration that makes her flush (or perhaps it's the cold or some kinky name-association-memory that he's not touching with a ten-foot butter-dipped pole). "And… I get it, I do. He graduated from the Scrooge school of holiday humbug way before even Meredith did. But…"

"Sucks," Alex offers after a beat, and he's not really talking about tinsel and lights, but again, Lexie doesn't call him on it, just looks at him steadily and then lifts the bottle and shifts a little closer to him, the sweet spicy scent of pine and coffee and something unnameable but distinctly_ Lexie_ drifting in the icy air.

Somewhere down the street, a door opens amid a sea of laughter and the strains of 'Deck the Halls' filter out into the night. They scowl in tandem, two lost ships in the treacherous tenuous sea of Christmas spirit. Lexie grips the bottle like she's winding up ready to pitch it into the bushes, which isn't part of the plans he didn't really make so he grabs it a little hastily by the neck. She doesn't complain, just looks at her hands as though she can still feel the shapes of the glass imprinted on her palms.

Green and blue and red blink frantically, erratically, from inside the house that was once their home, and if he was watching an ECG monitor instead of the walls of Meredith's living room he'd be calling for the paddles right about now, DNR or no.

On off. On off. Beep. Beep.

"Charge to two hundred," Lexie says apropos of nothing, and Alex sucks in a surprised breath at how much she's riding his wavelength. She sighs, and waves her hand at the bottle absently. "I made eggnog from scratch and everything, but obviously it's at Mark's and I'm not, so – makeshift holiday nightcap?"

"Pretty sure you don't put bourbon in eggnog," he replies, but cracks the seal anyway and offers it to her. "Ladies first," he says, and she looks at him with a hint of surprise but accepts. He'd be offended – if he could be bothered – the ogre does have _some _manners, even if he's not a gallant Shepherd-esque knight.

He knows a little something about the weight of tarnished armour, after all.

"Actually," Lexie says through the fog of hot alcohol-laced breath in cold air, wrinkling her nose a little against the burn, "I'm pretty sure they started using bourbon as a substitute in the 1700's, when rum was scarce after the Revolutionary War. We don't have any milk, or sugar, or eggs, but…"

He resists the urge to roll his eyes and bark out her nickname, and instead just snorts and grabs the bottle from her. Upending it, he closes his eyes as the smoky richness of the liquor screams its fiery trail down his throat and settles warm and roiling in his empty stomach.

"If you're a _really_ good boy," Lexie offers with that lopsided Grey grin that says she's feeling a little reckless and maybe wants to escape as much as he does, even if he knows deep down that she's only teasing. "I'll let you trim my tree."

Alex very nearly chokes on his mouthful of bourbon.

He's forgotten that under the babble and doe eyes and soft exterior, Lexie has the spirit of a fighter, the kind who's not above a little dirty double entendre every now and then. The old Alex would have grabbed Lexie right then and kissed her, hot and hard and furious, but the ghosts of relationships past and present (and he can't deny it, he hopes there's a ghost of a future there as well) lurk too closely in the shadows behind them.

On off. On off. Blue and red and green blur across Lexie's face and make her look impossibly young and innocent, though the suggestive quirk of her eyebrows says she's anything but.

A little nagging voice that sounds oddly like Bailey whispers low and urgent in his ear. _Don't be a damn fool_. He feels a smile spread across a face that's almost (but not_ quite_) forgotten how to do anything but frown.

Maybe there's something to be said for mustering a little holiday spirit after all.

* * *

Reviews, as always, are much appreciated. :)


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